Back to square one on press freedom, so here’s what we should do next

So we go back to the drawing board on press regulation. Now that the Privy Council has rejected the newspaper industry’s Royal Charter, we should hold the whole post-Leveson process up to scrutiny.

First, and mainly, we must ask whether it was wise for the Government to give the job to the Privy Council in the first place. Using a secretive, medieval and monarchical body controlled by serving politicians was bound to be controversial.

Even if unjustified in reality, it was bound to smack of state involvement in control of the press, and therefore alarm publishers and journalists. It was not an idea floated by Lord Justice Leveson in his report. It was a political fix and, to be frank, it was daft.

I don’t think I’m being unduly republican when I say that press freedom should not be enshrined in a document “granted” by the monarch. With the greatest of respect to the Queen, it has nothing to do with her. And I suspect she agrees, wanting no part in such a controversial business.

Instead, Prime Minister David Cameron — in company with the other party leaders — must think again. The fix has become unfixed and we are back to square one, trying to find a way of creating a form of press regulation that is independent from both politicians and the industry.

It is an entirely feasible proposition without incorporating it in calligraphy on vellum. The key to independence is, as it always has been, the use of existing bodies, such as a Public Appointments Commission, to select the members of an over-arching recognition body.

That body would oversee the membership of the regulator and, crucially, ensure that the publishers do not exercise undue control through the group that they would necessarily form in order to organise the funding of the regulator.

Similarly, there needs to be agreement about the membership of the committee responsible for drawing up a code of ethics (though I cannot imagine it differing much from the current, and workable, editors’ code).

Of course, the details of the relationships between each component are crucial. But there is no reason why they could not be hammered out in meetings between all the interested parties, notably the publishers and Hacked Off, the organisation representing press victims.

Politicians need not play any part in the process, except to ensure that it happens. They must find a figure of sufficient impartiality to engender respect from each side to chair the meetings. Afterwards, MPs can decide whether the compromise agreement complies with Leveson’s recommendations.

Mr Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg must accept that they were wrong to ignore the publishers when they drew up their own Royal Charter.

How can one achieve a “voluntary” form of regulation without the “volunteers” being present and having a say?

That mistake is history now. Belatedly, as should have been the case directly after Leveson, pictured, delivered his report, talks must be arranged. Sensible combatants fighting battles in which neither side can either win or lose agree a truce. From the truce stems compromise.

Although the publishers have already set in train a new regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), there is still time for its ruling structure to be amended. No Royal Charter is required in order to do so.

Roy Greenslade is Professor of Journalism, City University London, and writes a blog for the Guardian